Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1942 in Barwa, Palestine (now Israel), into a land-owning Sunni Muslim family. Following the Israeli occupation in 1948 his family fled their hometown. He attended the University of Moscow, USSR, for one year in 1970, and then moved to Cairo, Egypt. As a young man Darwish faced house arrest and imprisonment his political activism and for publicly reading his poetry. His collections of poetry include Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Be..